Less than 7% of Web3 VC funding is female-led startups: Reported

Startups created or led by women accounted for 6.43% of the $27.85 billion in Web3 venture capital (VC) investments over the past two years.

According to a Jan. 11 report by Bitgate Research, women-led Web3 startups raised $1.77 billion in Web3 VC from $27.85 billion from Q1 2022 to Q3 2023. That means male-led startups received $26.08 billion in funding. Similarly, women-led Web3 startups comprise less than 9% of startups in the sector. For the purposes of the study, a “female-led blockchain startup” refers to a blockchain startup where at least 50% of the executives were women.

Regardless of gender, VC funding for blockchain companies has entered a broad decline since 2022, with total funding falling from $6.4 billion in Q1 2022 to a low of $2 billion before rebounding slightly in the following quarter. Despite the recovery, researchers say:

“In Q3 2023, funding for blockchain startups led by women was 8.2%, which is 2.5 times lower than the overall figure for startups in various sectors (20.3%) for women.”

According to Bridget Greenwood, founder of The Bigger Pie, a network that supports women in blockchain globally, the overall amount of VC funding allocated to women in the country is less: “I stumbled upon a shocking statistic. Out of all VC funding [in the U.K.]”Only 3% goes to female founders, 8% goes to mixed teams, and the rest goes to all-male teams,” she said.

An experiment conducted by a team of Canadian and American researchers found that venture capitalists, who are mostly male, are biased against female entrepreneurs.

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